Heads You Lose

(Putnam; 300 pages; $24.95)

Two heads are better than one, it turns out, when solving the mystery of a headless corpse. Lisa Lutz, San Francisco author of the best-selling comedic crime novel series that started with "The Spellman Files," teamed up with former boyfriend David Hayward, a poet and editor, to create "Heads You Lose," a collaborative effort that ostensibly reveals as much about the co-authors as the characters.

OK, it's a gimmick: This novel about squabbling, pot-growing siblings Lacey and Paul sometimes working at cross purposes is written in alternating chapters by squabbling co-writers Lisa and Dave sometimes working at cross purposes. Following each chapter are notes in which the co-authors criticize each other's plot and character choices while digging up old dirt on their former (actual) romantic relationship and a failed (fictional) screenplay they co-wrote years ago titled "The Fop." But the gimmick becomes as entertaining as the story.

"Your storyline with Terry Jakes is bordering on incoherent," Lisa writes Dave after Chapter 9. "How about we keep him out of the picture for a while and work on creating more viable suspects? Also, let's work on making this more cinematic, but not like The Fop. There was way too much drinking and talking in that script. In fact, that sounds like a fitting description of our whole relationship."

According to the rules of the collaboration, laid out in a (fake?) editor's note, Hayward wrote the even chapters and Lutz wrote the odd. "They would not outline or discuss what they were working on. Each author would read the other's chapter 'blind.' Neither author was allowed to undo a plot development established by the other." The post-chapter notes document each reader's reaction to the developing story, as do footnotes throughout the text, such as, "Are you insane?" when Lutz finds that the erudite Hayward has used a Latin term, or "Was there a sale at Wal-Mart?" after Hayward finds that Lutz has placed both a Charlton Heston doormat and gnome lawn jockey on Sheriff Ed's porch.

But beyond the madcap metafictional motif, there is a compelling, often funny account of orphaned siblings in their 20s taking detective work into their own hands (because they can't risk cops sniffing around their illegal crop) in a small town near Mount Shasta called Mercer. Nearly everyone in Mercer becomes a suspect, including the corrupt brothers who run an assisted-living facility, shady doctors, a sketchy barkeep, a genius ex-stripper with a limp (she actually lives in nearby Tulac) and a major pot grower with a few screws loose.

Paul and Lacey take their own crisscrossing paths to solve the mystery of the headless body, while keeping secrets from each other and unearthing others from their past.

Dave's strong suit is character, Lisa's plot, we learn through the notes. And a funny rivalry develops as she keeps killing off characters and he keeps bringing (or trying to bring) them back. The co-authors have numerous running gags - characters are often found watching fake TV shows, such as "Brain Freeze," a quiz show in which contestants have to answer questions after eating ice cream - and are constantly needling each other about true facts like Lisa's lack of a college degree and Dave's lack of fame, despite having had a poem published in Harper's. After Lisa chides Dave for using too highfalutin a vocabulary, he writes an entire chapter like a "Dick and Jane" reader, in a large, kid-friendly type size.

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